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Bill Press on future of Current TV hosts

'This is bigger than just Current,' Press said. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

Like Press, Uygur said he’s also in talks with other cable stations — which he would not disclose — but he says his brand’s popularity online means TV isn’t essential to the success of The Young Turks. “We don’t need TV at all,” he said.

For Press, the failure of the Current experiment marks a “disappointment” for those in the realm of progressive, left-wing media.

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“I was hoping that Current TV would be the new major voice for progressive media in this country and that’s just not going to be right now, which I think is sad,” he said. “And it leaves the American people without good options when it comes to political point of view. It will be harder and harder to find progressive voices on radio and television. And MSNBC does a good job in their evening line-up, but the rest of the day they’re not there for progressives the way Current at least had the promise of being there. I think that’s unfortunate and that’s sad.”

Current never did live up to what it promised viewers, and the network’s dissolution makes any future progressive media experiment hard to imagine in the current media world, Fordham University media studies professor Paul Levinson said.

“Overall, they were a pale reflection of MSNBC and that didn’t really add all that much to the dialogue,” Levinson said. “I don’t know if there is room on television for more than one big player in a particular ideological point of view.”

While Press speaks about going back to the drawing board, Uygur says the place for progressives to gather will be on his network. The online venture has a number of on-air contributors for Current already associated with the brand, such as John Fugelsang, and Uygur noted The Young Turks is talking to other hosts from the dying network.

“Look, MSNBC is the Democratic Party channel,” Uygur said of the network where he once worked. “So liberals and progressives will accidentally go there thinking that they’re the progressive channel. I get that, right. And look, a lot of their hosts are progressives, bless their hearts, and I like them. But, obviously, it’s the Democratic Party establishment channel. I mean, they literally told me as much. That’s why I’m not on the channel anymore. So I don’t think that the niche going forward is another liberal channel necessarily like MSNBC. I think the niche going forward is an anti-establishment channel.”

Press, though, said he’s optimistic there’s life after Current TV’s death for progressive media.

“Given the opportunity to compete, we can compete,” he said. “But it takes a long-term commitment. It took Fox News maybe 10 years before they really had built their audience, which is now very loyal and very profitable. We’ve never had that kind of sustained commitment to progressive talk.”